


Artefacts

by Arazsya



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Archaeology, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Quadruple Drabble
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-20
Updated: 2020-05-20
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:47:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24286876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arazsya/pseuds/Arazsya
Summary: The remains are the day’s most exciting find.
Comments: 13
Kudos: 31





	Artefacts

The remains are the day’s most exciting find – Tjelvar hadn’t anticipated quite so much this early into the excavation, but there it had been. A skull, grinning at him out of the mud and sediment of a trench where he’d expected only pottery.

It _is_ Rome, though. Well. Italy, at least. As close as the Cult of Mars will let them get to the real thing. A little mortality is only to be expected.

They spend days digging around it, discussing the evidence for and against it being a proper internment – Tjelvar finds the angle of it too awkward, limbs thrown out, though Frobisher insists that the face is oriented east. Neither of them writes any of it down – speculation isn’t something for their records. But they develop that strange sort of detached affection to it, as they do. Talk to it, ask it the questions that it can only answer through their studies. Try to build up a life from dust and supposition for a person from the time before dragons.

The skeleton is complete – no scattering by animals, suggesting that it had ended up buried fairly soon after death. (Tjelvar favours the idea that they’ve found what they were looking for: a site dating to somewhere around the fall of Rome, that this person had been fleeing it, perhaps been caught, accounting for the strange positioning. Frobisher teases him for not being content with one career-making discovery, but admits eventually that it’s not any burial tradition that he’s ever seen, save that of little time or less care.) From the state and structure of the pelvis, Tjelvar estimates a man, probably somewhere in his twenties. His teeth are in unusually good condition for the period – even by today’s standards – so he was probably from a wealthy family.

Layer by layer, they clear the earth from around him, working painstakingly towards the point where they’ll be able to move the bones without damaging them. They’re almost there, when Tjelvar sees something glinting around the cervical vertebrae. He drops his brush, crouches, and carefully lifts out a small metal disc that sparkles in the sunlight with no trace of corrosion.

A distant, oceanic roaring starts up in the back of his head. The rest of him carries on like it can’t hear it, turning it over into his palm, gently easing away cracked mud with his thumb.

_Ed was here._


End file.
